


Common Ground

by Mythweaver



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythweaver/pseuds/Mythweaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prequel. Before Eblan ever knew of any conspiracy concerning the Tower. Before its prince went off to war--before there even was a prince as we know him--there were two people whose unlikely partnership would shape the kingdom's future. Irrefutably.</p><p>Could a mage ever have a place among the Sons of Shadow?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Common Ground

The Story of Nyah and Takeshi

 

It was a cold winter’s day—the day the strange girl appeared in our village. The circumstances, the coincidence; and my uncle had just boasted of the security of Talon’s borders. To have a girl of barely seventeen years appear as if out of thin air, to magically be in one place and then in another—the craft of a mage but the talent of one of our own? It was only by the providence of her forthright words and her appeal to logic that she was not immediately put to the sword. She was not a stranger to discount so easily.

                She hailed from Mysidia, a land I had heard of in stories. It was a mysterious place, by all accounts. An ancient land steeped in culture and memory and magic, and a place so very different from our own. But her people were not bound to the same secrecy as ours, nor the same restraint. Her speech was free and opinionated, her words sharp, and her tone indicated that she would not tolerate disrespect.

                Who was this girl? My uncle, at once outraged and intrigued by her promise of new information and knowledge, had her imprisoned after a lengthy interrogation. How had she snuck past the guards, all seasoned shinobi of much renown? How could she dare go toe to toe with a king? And who was she to violate the security of Talon’s grounds, a place that no one outside of the clan was allowed to see?

                I observed her in her bower, at how she watched the world around her—a world she couldn’t possibly comprehend—continue like the well-practiced dance that it was. Everyone in their routine, everyone with their purpose, and she the animal in her cage. I never saw her shed a tear—strange for a woman who had not been raised to resist hardship. She had a spine of steel, and her defiance was clear.

                What had she run from to end up here?

                Days became weeks.

                The winter was harsh and the winds biting, and despite all of this, she remained in her hovel—a prisoner whose fate had not yet been decided. I could not resist the temptation to know—to ask.

                I approached her cage. She was shivering when I knelt beside the bars. Her hands were purple and her skin dry, but still she defiantly sat upright, covering her head with the heavy robe she’d been given.

                “Why do you watch me?” she whispered, each syllable shaking.

                “Why don’t you ask for mercy?” I asked instead. Surely, my uncle was keeping this woman in the cold to break her pride, but not to kill her.

                “I would not ask for mercy, I would ask for respect,” she replied, and her blue eyes were startling and fierce.

                “Who are you?” I tried again.

                She offered me a hesitant smile. “Aren’t you a keeper of secrets yourself? You should know better than to ask me that.”

                I wasn’t sure why, but I found that I liked this woman. “My name is Takeshi,” I told her, hoping that honesty would make her more pliant.

                “Takeshi,” she repeated, testing it out. “Who are you, the prince?”

                “No,” I answered, lowing my gaze. “I am of the same family as the king, yes, but of lesser importance. The throne will never be mine.”

                “So you took the risk in speaking to me. And have I satisfied your curiosity?”

                “My curiosity would be more satisfied if I knew your name.”

                She stared at me for several long moments, as if torn between the desire to tell the truth or a lie. “My name is Nyah,” she finally revealed, and then added with the bite of sarcasm, “And perhaps you should inform your king that guests often tell more stories when they are given suitable accommodations.”

 

0-0-0-0-0-0

 

                Brilliantly sneaky woman. She knew exactly which words to say and to which people and she had the king and his aides eating out of her hand. She had found a way to trade one captivity for another. No longer was she kept in her pen in the yard—she had been allowed a room, windowless and guarded, granted, but she had a pallet to sleep on. She had become a “guest” to the king of Eblan, his own personal story teller.

                I was given the evening to guard her room. The wooden floors were polished and cold under my sandaled feet, but I was used to chilly evenings. The mountains of the north were secluded in the winters—buried under snow. The evening was late, but not too late, and I knew she wouldn’t be asleep. I could hear her breathing through the door.

                “I’ve heard that you’ve been promising the king your services,” I said just loud enough for her to overhear.

                “I wondered if it was you,” she replied, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

                “What services were those, I wonder?”

                She hesitated. “I am well educated. I was schooled in languages, politics, and figures—and magic.”

                “The shinobi have no use for your knowledge of magic,” I told her. “We have no need for it.”

                “So I’ve heard.”

                “You’ve heard?” I asked. “That’s a curious thing on its own. Where did you hear such a thing?”

                “When a kingdom that lives in the shadows makes covert requests for white mages, a person can make their own conclusions,” she replied a little wryly. “Why would you need white mages, if you had no one with those particular skills—or no one capable of them?”

                _Well informed._

 _“_ Who _were_ you?” I insisted, discovering by the minute that she was a person of more importance than I had realized.

                She laughed, and it was almost as cold as the floor we were both sitting on.

                “Would you believe me if I told you?” she asked lightly.

                “That depends. You’re quite the story teller. How can I be sure you aren’t lying?”

                There was a moment of silence through the door. “I was a student of our Elder. One of his most promising students,” she mused. “Until they found out I was no longer fit for their order. An _exception.”_

 _“_ An exception?” I repeated.

                “Someone with unorthodox magic. Someone who could do more than they should.”

                “You were born with magic,” I said. It was an outstanding notion. The only people I’d ever heard of who were born to magic lived within our kingdom. The shinobi came from ancient roots, and ancient stigmas. We had gone to great lengths to hide what we were from the magic community of the world. For someone else to be born with magic in another corner of the world? That was rare—and dangerous.

                “Strange how you can live for years never knowing, until the day when you do,” she said sadly.

                “What did you do?”

                Again, she hesitated. “I caused a gale—sheared the trees all along the holy avenue,” She laughed. “Never saw such a look of fury on the Elder’s face. Nothing went quite right after that. Just one thing after another.”

                “How did you get here?” I wanted to know.

                “On a boat.”

                “There are no boats that come from Mysidia to Eblan,” I replied.

                “There are many boats near Agart, and some of those go as far as Eblan’s waters. Mages have their own tricks that even your people could take a few notes from.”

                _And cocky._  

                “Why did you seek us out?”

                “What better way to get the attention of your king than to appear in his own village?” she inquired.

                “For what purpose?”

                “Asylum.”

                I sighed, cradling my head in my hands. “You chose a dangerous kingdom to seek asylum.”

                “Danger wards off the curious. I can’t go back.”

                “You can’t stay.”

                “Your king hasn’t made up his mind. Why have you?”

                It was my turn to pause. “What would you do here? What kind of life could you possibly have? Have you ever considered that you might never see more than those four walls?”

                “It’s probably better than what I would have had in Mysidia,” she reflected. “I’ll take my chances. I have nothing else to lose.”

                “Your life,” I said, tiredly. “Your life may have been spared up until now but that could change at a moment’s notice.”

                “Then at least it was by my own choice to come here, and not because I allowed myself to be locked away and deemed insane.”

                “How can a girl your age be so without fear?” I asked, intrigued at her resoluteness.

                “You’d be surprised.”

                “Perhaps I should start listening to the tales you tell the king,” I replied.

                “Perhaps, and then maybe you’d get your answers,” she answered.

                I smiled—at this game the two of us were playing. “I look forward to it,” I told her, and to be honest, I truly was.


	2. Asylum

 

Obtaining an audience with the king was difficult; but I managed, on occasion, to be present in the room while he was having his discussions with Nyah. Each afternoon as I watched the proceedings, I would see her kneeling on the floor with her hands in her lap—in the borrowed robes dyed a rich hue of blue tucked and folded around her slight form. Each day the king would inquire about politics, poetry, or language and they would engage in a certain amount of wordplay. My command of the common tongue, the tongue of politics, was good, but even I couldn’t keep up to their level of sophistication. I hadn’t seen the king smile in many years the way he did when he spoke to her—clearly something in her answers was pleasing to him.

                One day, as I accompanied her from the king’s study to her room, we took a detour into one of the compound’s gardens. Once again, I couldn’t help but inquire as to her motivations. It had been over a month now that she had been with us, but the king still had not decided her fate and her persistence had yet to falter.

When we were both alone, I watched her take stock of her surroundings as one gazes at a piece of art. She wasn’t facing me, but I could imagine the small smile on her lips.

“You want something other than asylum,” I ventured, taking a few slow steps toward her. “Something Mysidia couldn’t offer you.”

She crossed her arms, as if doing so would protect her from my words. “Shinobi have a magic different from that of mages,” she said simply. “Magic that isn’t understood by scholars on the subject. Magic like mine.”

                “And?”

                She turned to look at me, studying me, and whatever smile might have been on her lips had now faded to a thin line of contemplation. “I don’t want to live in fear of my magic,” she said. “I want to learn how to use it, as you do.”

                “This is what you’ve been asking of the king?” I asked incredulously, feeling my brows rise. “You want to be trained as one of us? An outsider? It’s absurd.”

                “Why is it that only those born here have the privilege of understanding this sort of magic? This confounding, unpredictable, intimate magic?” she asked, frowning.

“Intimate?” I asked, uncertain of her meaning. I had never seen my magic as anything but a tool, not an emotional bond.

Her gaze flicked away, staring at the walls around us as if this place and the entire world were her prison. “I didn’t ask for this!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “I didn’t ask to wake up one morning and find that none of my spells would do as I asked—that the slightest change in my thoughts could affect what I meant my spells to do. I couldn’t even cast Fira without causing a firestorm beyond my control!”

                “You did more than trim Mysidia’s hedges, didn’t you?” I asked, and I noticed her eyes meet mine again with a touch of dismay.

                She hugged herself more tightly with her arms than before. “I—I almost killed a man,” she forced out, and it was the first time I’d ever heard her voice falter.

                “I had intended to cast a simple spell—thunder,” she went on, as if telling the story to herself for the first time as well as myself. “It was an exercise in precision and control—and I couldn’t concentrate. I tried again and again to strike a single target, to tailor my words to that specific task, but nothing I said made a difference. My tutor was growing increasingly frustrated with my lack of success, a weasel of a man, really. I imagined him being shocked out of his chair; that dour expression on his face wiped clear off. I hadn’t meant to _shock_ him literally, but my words and my thoughts were in two different directions and my magic took the shape of them both. Burnt his skin black, stopped his heart…” she swallowed hard and then carried on. “They blamed me for willfully harming him. Insubordination. A hateful act.”

                “What was your punishment?” I wanted to know.

                “A month of confinement, a personal apology, and an explanation. But I had no explanation. I had never meant to harm him.”

                “And then what?” I ventured. “One thing after another?”

                She sighed and started to pace in small agitated circles. “Spells that were only supposed to last minutes, lasted weeks. I lost my temper, and a wind kicked up a dust storm in the courtyard,” she explained. “People would vanish unexpectedly and find themselves in the strangest of places—atop the tower of prayer, or halfway along the Serpent’s Road.”

                “And then what?”

                “I couldn’t use any magic,” she said sadly. “None of it. None of the spells I had learned throughout my childhood, none of the incantations. It’s why none of your people cast a mage’s magic, isn’t it? The unpredictability and danger? That tang of wrongness to something that should have order?” she stopped in her pacing long enough to look at me pleadingly. “How can you stand it? That voice in your head whispering to you?” she asked.

                “A voice? I hear no voice,” I replied.

                Her eyes bore deeper into mine; blue and bright and frightening. “If not a voice, then that deep and irresistible urge to summon power to your fingertips from within, to bend and shape things to your will.”

                At this, I felt I understood her. The magic in our blood was like a second hunger—the need to be used and fed and unleashed. It was a gift—and a curse for those whose magic was stronger than their restraint. We learned meditations at an early age, ascribing each magical inclination to an emotion and a memory, anchoring them. We did not use words, no, but we had found other ways over the centuries to keep our unwieldy magic in check. Recall the memory of a tree struck by lightning in a storm, at the power and terror of it, and the memory could unleash magic as powerful as the vision. Calm your thoughts and dwell on a moment of contentedness and peace, and you could stabilize magic into something malleable and sustainable. It took many years to master, but I had never known what would happen when a magic-born person tried to channel magic from within and without. From Nyah’s description it seemed the two couldn’t co-exist in any fashion without becoming doubly unpredictable. Magic beseeched from crystals and magic from within were two different beasts.

                “You learn to live with it,” I told her. “Or you go mad.”

                She walked close to me all of a sudden, and her regard startled me. Her fingers gripped my arm, making contact with bare skin just above my glove, and I found my throat constricting. I had never had the chance to spend this much time with her before, or to admire the exotic features she boasted. Her dark hair falling in cascades past her shoulders, her high cheekbones, and eyes as blue as the sea…

                “Please,” she begged. “You’ve taken about as much interest in me as the king—surely you could—”

                I slipped my arm out of her grip, and she took a step back, her brows pinched together.

“To tell you would be treason,” I told her, firmly, truthfully. No outsider had ever learned the secrets of our people, and I wouldn’t be the first to break that law.

She exhaled sharply through her nose. “Then I shall go mad,” she said, and took a few angry steps past me. “Please take me back to my room.”


	3. Earning Trust

 

                “I’ve agreed to let her stay,” the king confided in me and my cousin late one evening. We were sitting at the table in the king’s quarters with a cup of strong tea in each of our hands. The lamps had dimmed to a steady low gleam, and the room held more shadows than light—fitting for the news we had just received.

                My cousin was older than I, already in his mid-thirties, and a proud man. He was also a traditional man, and I saw the characteristic pursing of his lips the moment my uncle had said what he wanted to say.

                “Is that truly wise?” he asked, and then had enough decency to bow his head once his father’s gaze fixed upon him.

                “I have interrogated this woman personally for three months. Are you so eager to call me senile, that you would question my judgment in this matter?”

                My cousin bent his head lower to the table, but his jaw was set. “No, sir, it was not my intention.”

                We were a family to the clan first, to the crown, second, and we took pains to make sure we regarded the king the same way when we were in the north—out of the public eye. That wasn’t to say he held any less power, but this was the chain of military command, and whatever he said was law.

                The fury in the king’s dark eyes lessened, and he took a long sip from his cup. “The spring is coming. My time in the north is almost at an end, and it is time the kunoichi in the capital learned more than tea ceremony. This woman is a scholar—and it has been many years since anyone with such knowledge of the world has come into our domain.”

                “She used deception to enter our boundaries,” my cousin protested. “What if she uses deception to find a way out—to share what she learns here with the other nations?”

                “If she leaves with any knowledge of our people, she will be marked for death, and she will be warned accordingly,” the king said evenly.

                I looked from my uncle to my cousin, feeling the tension in the room. All of this trouble for one woman?

                “Takeshi, you’ve been very quiet this evening,” my uncle observed. “Do you have similar doubts as my son?”

                I nearly choked on my tea, and looked at my uncle with wide eyes.

“Don’t get him involved in this, father,” my cousin jibed. “He has the look of a spooked cat.”

I had to admit, for all of my cousin’s personal flaws, he had a knack for keeping the king’s attention fixed on himself. I silently thanked him and set down my cup.

But the king would not be gainsaid. “If my own family cannot agree with my decision, how am I to expect the other clans to accept this arrangement?”

“You would take her to the capital?” I asked. “Has she asked for anything in return?”

I saw a small smile tug at my uncle’s lips. “I knew I taught you strategy for a reason,” he told me with a hint of esteem that I knew rankled my cousin’s pride. “She has asked to be shown our meditations.”

“ _What?_ ” my cousin blurted out, to his father’s raised hand.

“As I understand it, she is a long-lost daughter of our kind. A woman born to gifts. I am not seeking to make her a part of any of our clans, no—but to teach her how to control her gifts in exchange for the knowledge she has? I see little harm in that.”

“She’s an outsider,” my cousin spat out the word as if it were burning a hole in his mouth. “She’s no better than a stray.”

“This is my decision, and you will abide by it,” the king said firmly, setting his cup on the table as a gesture of finality. “By the end of the month, she will make the journey south to the capital.”

 

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

I spoke to Nyah the following day. She had already been informed by the king’s second, of course, but I wanted to be able to tell her myself. She was sitting on the pallet in her room, eyes closed, but she looked up when I entered.

“You’ve heard,” she said matter-of-factly.

“You’re being taken to the capital,” I confirmed, trying to hide my annoyance that she always presumed to know exactly what I was thinking. “You must be pleased. You’re finally getting what you wanted.”

She smiled hesitantly, slowly un-crossing her legs and resting her hands on her knees. “Yes,” she admitted. “I am.”

I frowned, and it drew her concern. “What is it?” she asked, looking at me sideways.

“Just because you’re being allowed to leave this village—don’t think your troubles are over.”

“Why would I possibly think that?”

“You’ve spent three months beseeching the king to grant you asylum and now you’ve succeeded. Don’t become overconfident,” I warned.

“I have no confidence beyond the fact that the sun will rise in the morning,” she said. “I never expected my life to be easy once I’d left my homeland, and I don’t trust to hope—only persistence.”

I stared at her. This was not the rhetoric I had expected from a mage who believed in destiny and fate. “Was the real reason you left your people your inability to accept their doctrines?” I asked.

She laughed softly, and had a helpless look on her face when her eyes met mine. “You know nothing about my people and nothing about their beliefs. Don’t be so quick to pass judgment.”

“When you arrive in the south,” I said, and then paused. “Be careful.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied, and disgusted by her apparent lack of concern, I left the room. She was going to get herself killed—I was sure of it.

 

0-0-0-0

 

The month’s end came and went as surely as the spring thaw. The king and his retainers, as well as several newly trained and several seasoned shinobi, prepared to leave Talon for the capital by the southern sea. I watched them leave with three other men at my side. We would remain to continue the spring training—there would be ten under my command this year.

Nyah was lifted onto a shadowmere, called such because of its coal black coat—a favorite among our people—and joined the king’s men on the road. I wished I could accompany them, to learn more about the mysterious girl, and to keep her out of trouble. She had already raised more than a few brows in the shelter of the village during the four months she’d been here. She was bound to raise more once she was among the more varied company of the capital.

She turned in the saddle and her blue eyes met mine. She hadn’t realized that I wouldn’t be joining them on this journey, and her regard was cool, concerned even. It was possible that our paths would not cross again for some time and all I could do was gaze back at her. The party pulled away, and Nyah’s attention was drawn with it. Her long dark hair swayed across her back as the meres plodded along the marshy ground. She would be alone, a stranger in a strange land once more, and there was nothing I could do for her. Perhaps now she would heed my earlier warning and value caution over courage. For her sake, I hoped she would.


End file.
